Sunday, February 16, 2025
The Unkillable Roy David
Roy has come close to suddenly departing this world a number of times. The most recent case was a massive heart attack in October of 2023. He was taken to a local hospital where they gave him critical first aid and then rushed him to a specialized heart center in Mysore, where they found only 20% of his heart functioning. Coming to terms with the fact that his habit of smoking heavily was not doing him any good, he quit cold turkey and now his heart is pumping away at 40%. Not the best, but much better than before. Roy attributes his recovery to fast care and positive thinking!
Previous to that, he nearly lost his life in a motorbike accident in 1990. I didn’t get the details of that episode, but I did for another one, and I really want to tell you about it. If you ever meet Roy David, you will notice that he doesn’t have full use of his left hand and this is due to an incident in a rice paddy in March of 1978, involving an angry landlord and a pair of bell-bottom jeans. At that time there was much conflict, often violent, between tenant farmers and land owners. Roy was working with a Jesuit priest, Fr. Kamath, organizing farmers and helping them file declarations to claim land under the Land Reforms Act of the Indian government, so they could get “out of the clutches of the landlords.” Well, the landlords weren’t happy about this and they did their own organizing, of thugs to attack “troublemakers.”
One afternoon, in a rice field near a village called Abettu of Meramajal, Fr. Kamath’s nephew was attacked. On hearing the scream, Roy ran to help. Unfortunately, his toe got stuck in the hem of his bell bottoms, and he tripped and fell into the paddy. As he was pulling himself up, he heard a shout, looked up, and threw up his arm just in time to block the swing of the sword of the landlord coming down over his head. Somehow, this defense tactic saved his life, but both bones in his forearm were severed and only a bit of skin kept his hand attached. The assailant then swung two more times, cutting an 18-inch slash across his back that narrowly missed his spinal cord and another in his shoulder. “So, he declared that I am dead,” said Roy. “Three times is dead, dead, dead.”
Finding himself not dead, Roy picked himself up and made his way to the home of someone he knew, where they treated him by placing two Araca nut leaves on the wound and tying it with a dirty cloth. They offered him a swig of local liquor made from cashew nuts, which he refused, so they poured it on his injuries instead. A taxi was called, but as it was speeding toward the house, the driver came to find out about the attack and turned back. He did not want to get involved, knowing he would be called to testify in court. Somehow, they were able to get another car and he arrived at the hospital around 8:00 PM, almost five hours after that initial run-in with his bell bottoms. Needless to say, he was not in good shape, having lost most of his blood, and since there was no blood in the hospital his sister provided hers. The police were able to come up with a bottle as well.
Since Roy is here telling me this story right now, you might have been able to guess that he survived. His recovery took three months, and even after additional surgeries, he has limited use of his hand to this day. “The landlord tried to kill me with a sword but he could not kill my spirit,” concluded Roy David.
The nephew, you’ll be glad to know, escaped with minor injuries, but his uncle, Fr. Kamath, suffered a broken leg. He had also rushed to the scene and had also tripped in the paddy. Roy says he has no regrets because 99% of the tenants got their land. Though I’m guessing he lost his affinity for bell bottoms after that day.
What is your motivation?
A question I like to ask ARI graduates is, “What is your motivation for working for the people?” With all the dangers, difficulties, even jail time and near loss of his life, it was a question I absolutely had to ask Roy David. Some of you may be thinking that it is because he is Adivasi, but the fact is that he is not. No, the answer he gave was short and it had to do with one more brush with death. When Roy was young, he got typhoid fever. When he recovered, which was no guarantee, his mother told him to serve God. So, “now I am serving God,” was his simple reply. “I survived because God has a purpose in my life.”
“Working with the people you have to understand the pulse of the people,” he added. “The Adivasis are the most exploited and pushed to the corner. They are the last people. Actually, they are the world’s first people, but here they are pushed to become the last people. I want to do something for the last people, though it is very challenging.”
Update: May 16, 2026
After all, no one is really immortal. Today, I heard the unhappy news that Roy David passed away – another sudden heart attack. He may have left us, but the movement for the land rights of the Adivasi will go on, because he did what the best leaders do. He made himself unneeded. At first, he spoke for the people, but then he showed the people how to speak for themselves. Now they can stand without fear in front of the police, the politicians, the powerful men and demand their own rights as human beings!
The fight will continue!
A Tibetan enclave
In the evening, we went for a visit to the Tibetan Monastery. Remember those Tibetan monks I had been seeing here and there? It turns out that there are thousands of them living in a town near Kushalnagar, where Roy David lives. When the Chinese invaded and annexed Tibet, the Indian government opened its arms to the thousands who poured over the border, providing them with land to settle on in different parts of the country. Then Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, saw this as a humanitarian response to an overwhelming crisis, but a side benefit is that it really ticked off China, one of their greatest adversaries.
The monks are afforded the same rights as an Indian, except to vote, and at the same time they are given the freedom to preserve their language, cultural and religious practices. Roy David could not help pointing out the irony of expelling native people from their lands while at the same time cutting 10,000 acres of teak forest and giving that land to these people. He has nothing against the Tibetans. It is the arbitrary and unjust way in which the government treats its own people that upsets him.
We visited the Nyingmapa Monastery, which is a bit of a tourist spot, complete with souvenir shops and a large restaurant and shopping area. This probably brings in money to the settlement. A friend of Roy’s from Assam runs a pizza and burger joint here, so I availed myself of a hamburger in India. After that we each drank a refreshing coconut, during which Roy put on a reflective expression and said, “A person’s needs are unlimited. You can never fulfill your needs. This is actually greed. If you chase it, you will never be happy.”
That evening, I had my last Shoma. We would be departing the next day. I also bought some peanut brittle, a popular snack here, and learned an important lesson. Never eat peanut brittle in bed. Across the street, the music and dancing that had been rocking the neighborhood for the last two days wound to a stop. It must have been quite a wedding.
